Blue Oushak-Pattern Hand-Knotted Wool Rug, Mahal Series

Almost nobody weaves the Oushak pattern in Uşak any more. This one was knotted in Pakistan instead, in wool on a cotton warp, 310 × 420 cm (10'2" × 13'9"), with the blue of open sky running underneath yellow and brown drawing. It belongs to the Mahal series and there is a single piece of it.

Blue does the work here. The yarns were dyed by a method that leaves several values of one color in the same batch, so the ground shifts by half a tone across a hand's width and never sits flat — the effect a rug person calls abrash, arrived at on purpose. Yellow and brown carry the motifs above it, held in pastel and earth values rather than saturated ones, and that restraint is why a rug covering this much floor does not shout. The tonal spread is even across the whole field instead of pooling at one end.

It is tied with the double knot, meaning each knot is closed twice: a rug made this way takes about twice as long as one of the same knot count tied the ordinary way, and the interlocking rows are what hold the structure together. Cotton makes the warps and wool makes the pile, both spun by hand rather than drawn from mill thread. Keep it out of direct sun, because a rug dyed to hold this many close values is precisely the kind that fades unevenly. Rotate it end for end about once a year.

• Hand-knotted in Pakistan, where most Oushak-pattern weaving now takes place.
• Wool pile on a cotton warp, tied throughout with the double knot.
• Double knotting roughly doubles the weaving time against a single-knotted rug of the same density.
• Blue ground with yellow and brown motifs, in pastel and earth values.
• Dyed so that several tones of one color appear across a single surface.
• 310 × 420 cm (10'2" × 13'9"), a size for a large living room or a wide entrance hall.
• Professional cleaning; keep it away from direct sunlight and rotate it occasionally.

It is a calm rug for a loud room, and the reason to put it in a big entrance is that the space then reads as somewhere you have arrived rather than somewhere you pass through.